At the core of the Community Foundation is an investment for the future of our community: Through the investment of the proceeds of the sale of the Mirboo North community aged care facility, the maintenance of this investment in our ‘future fund’ and the distribution of the earnings to create a more prosperous and resilient community we are investing in our future.

It naturally flows from this forward looking perspective, that we see the need for a sustainable environment into the future and it is for this reason that we have just taken the TAKE2 Pledge to tackle climate change.

TAKE2 is the Victorian Government’s collective climate change pledge program, which arose from the State Government’s target to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It is a collective program, which means that it is open to everyone – individuals, businesses, government organisations and community organisations to make a pledge on actions they are going to take to contribute to reaching net zero emissions.

Our pledge sets out the actions we pledge to undertake under a number of different categories, some small and some large, in recognition that even small actions are important - from little things, big things grow.

The pledge is not all that we are doing, during 2017 the Community Foundation has been involved with a number of different projects where the underlying theme was sustainability. There was the Transitioning Coal Communities Forum which we co-hosted in April and the strategic grant to the Mirboo North Community Energy Hub for community engagement with their community power generation feasibility study. The Community Foundation has also joined the Australian Environmental Grantmaker’s Network, which has helped us understand how other grantmakers are tackling sustainability across Australia.

Finally, we should note that one of our pledges is to encourage others to consider what actions they may be able to take and whether they should take the pledge themselves. So, here it is! Have a look at the TAKE2 website to see if you, your business or community organisation could take that step – there are plenty of suggestions for small actions which all add up to a big impact.